Thomas Fitzgerald

Political Writer

A pair of speakers at a Republican victory rally Monday afternoon in Lancaster were unsparing in their contempt for Sen. Bob Casey (D.,Pa.), including the party’s nominee to replace him, businessman Tom Smith.

“Bobby Casey is not Robert Casey,” said state Rep. Scott Boyd, newly elected chairman of the Lancaster County GOP, referring to the late former governor and namesake of the incumbent senator. “The nut fell far from the tree on this one,” Boyd said, to laughter and applause.

In particular, he said, young Casey lacks his father’s intellect, as evinced by his record of voting with the positions of “Barack Hussein Obama” on 95 percent of roll call votes.

The avuncular Smith then soon detoured from his federal-debt-centric stump speech to take on his opponent’s patrimony.

“There’s many people that say that Sen. Casey won the gene pool,” said Smith, of Armstrong County in western Pennsylvania. “He wound up on third base, and actually thinks he hit the triple.” The latter echoes a famous remark that then-Gov. Ann Richards of Texas made at the 1988 Democratic National Convention to mock the wealthy background of George H.W. Bush, the 41st president.

Smith’s barb came in the context of a self-deprecating riff on the simplicity of his last name and how he’s proud to carry it into battle with the opponent who has a famous last name.

Casey allies were not amused by the disrespect from Smith, a former registered Democrat who was active in the tea-party movement that helped fuel the 2010 wave election that gave the GOP control of the U.S. House.

"Tom Smith didn't just fall from the Tea Party tree: he planted it by founding a Tea Party group," said Mark Nicastre, spokesman for the state Democratic Party. "He said he wants to go to Washington to represent the Tea Party while Bob Casey has been delivering for Pennsylvania's middle-class families."

Catching up on a development that occurred while your blogger – tent pitcher? – was on vacation last week, the Smith campaign has launched its first TV ad of the fall campaign. Called “Big Dreams,” the spot links Casey to four years’ worth of high unemployment and spotlights Smith, a former union coal miner who founded a coal company, as a job creator.